Rendezvous with Death
by Aya Renee
Summary: The Winter Soldier is sent out on his first mission since returning reluctantly to Hydra after the destruction of Project Insight. His target is Hastings Adler, sole surviving heiress to the legacy and fortune of infamous Hydra operative Verdun Adler. [One-shot Extended Edition]
1. Chapter 1

_Disclaimer: Nothing from Marvel is mine._

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><p>Prologue: Covert Hydra base. Three months after the destruction of Project Insight.<p>

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><p>"It's a shame how far a family can fall, in just two generations," remarked Baron von Strucker.<p>

Captain Lars Wirth stared at the dossier on Adler Dynamics and nodded. The Adler name had once garnered a great deal of respect and no small amount of fear throughout the ranks of Hydra. Verdun Adler's cunning military mind and technological inventiveness had been key in Hydra's revival during the Second World War.

Strucker swiped a non-existent piece of lint from his shoulder, and continued. "I considered Verdun a mentor, you know. What a shame his son had more interest in amassing a personal fortune than aiding the cause."

Lars snorted his agreement. He'd had the misfortune to meet the illustrious businessman that had been Arnhem Adler. He'd found the man to be ruthless, rude, and arrogant. But he was also a genius in biomechatronic research.

"He was useful, in his way," grunted Lars.

Strucker turned, and Lars felt his cold, piercing gaze upon him. He stiffened in abject fear, until the baron finally agreed.

"Yes, in his way. And his company will prove even more useful to us. The explosion at the Adler Dynamic research facility outside Philadelphia was a success. Captain Wirth, you should be commended. Over a dozen casualties, and the press think the mess is all Miss Adler's fault. The poor fräulein is beset with guilt, I'm told. I do think it's about time we free her from her burden."

Lars was surprised to hear this part of the plan, especially after reading through the file on Hastings Adler. She was a technological genius, by all accounts, like her father and grandfather before her. And, as was Adler family tradition, she had a famous battle as a namesake.

Pretentious drivel, thought Lars uncharitably. But what he said was, "She wouldn't prove useful like her father?"

Strucker waved his hand dismissively. "Arnhem Adler was a useful but _difficult_ puppet. The man had a penchant for unsanctioned military contracts, as you know, and we were forced to cut his strings."

Lars was certain many things had been cut on the arrogant Adler bastard, and he felt satisfied that the man had gotten exactly what he'd deserved for his unwillingness to fully commit to Hydra's demands.

"And for the time being, I have too many other strings to pull. As we've now fully infiltrated the board, we can simply take Adler Dynamics as our own. We've discredited their new upstart executive, the final step is to destroy her. And pass the blame onto one of the victims of the explosion, of course. A tragic end to a tragic story, to say the least."

Strucker's tone made it seem like anything _but _a tragedy, and then he added, "I'm confident that our soldier can handle one mewling woman."

Lars stiffened at the underlying threat in the baron's comment, knowing that if Hydra's metal-armed pet screwed the pooch on another assassination, many would pay the price for his mistake.

"Yes, Baron. He is capable of killing one mewling woman," replied Lars, with a confidence he did not feel.

Not only because there had been something decidedly off about their winter soldier since his return, but also because the woman staring back at him from the glossy photo he held in his meaty hands didn't look the least bit mewling.

She looked like her father.

Her dark hair was pulled up in a tight bun high upon her head, but the severe style only served to highlight her own steely gray eyes. Framed by a thick fringe of sable lashes, they seemed startlingly large in her heart-shaped face.

It was such a waste. She looked like a fighter with those flinty silver eyes and striking features, and the haughty jut of her little stubborn chin. Lars liked the ones that fought back. Sometimes he even let them win for a bit, just to watch the sparkle of hope flicker and die as he snuffed out their short, useless lives.

Except he wasn't called on for much field work these days, not since he'd been pulled up through the ranks. And certainly not with the master assassin they had frozen several floors under his feet.

"Hail Hydra," Lars muttered gruffly, shutting the dossier with an ominous snap.


	2. Chapter 2

_Disclaimer: Nothing from Marvel is mine._

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><p>Adler Dynamics office headquarters, Washington D.C.<p>

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><p>"I can't believe they expect you to play bimbo to the press just to cover their wrinkled asses!"<p>

Hastings Adler rolled her eyes at Karen's outburst, carefully shutting her office door behind her and immediately kicking off her towering heels. It had been a grueling six hour dinner with the board of directors of her father's company.

"Even wrinkled asses don't want to sit on a sinking ship," she muttered, shrugging out of her tailored suit jacket and loosening the top buttons of her cream silk blouse. She looked down to see a few crumbs stuck to the ridiculously expensive indigo skirt that completed her Alexander McQueen ensemble.

She wasn't usually the type to splurge on clothes, but she had quickly learned the importance of appearing as commanding as possible in front of her late father's men.

Karen looked up from the pile of papers she was sorting on the desk with a frown, running a hand through her short blond bob of curls in a gesture of frustration. "Adler Dynamics is not sinking, Hastings. And that explosion was not your fault, despite what your father's cronies want you to believe. We _will_ fix this, and you'll be part of the solution."

Hastings half-heartedly swiped away the crumbs and flashed a wan smile at her assistant. She was happy to have at least one loyal friend in the nightmare that was her life since the accident, yet these reassurances were beginning to ring hollow. Although it often seemed that Karen's optimism and energy were boundless, Hastings knew that the recent week was wearing even her formidable constitution thin.

"It's so late, Karen, you should head home," she offered. "I'll finish up here. I need to work on a few things. Give Michael and the kids my love. Oh, and hit the lights on your way out, I prefer the lamp."

The look of relief in Karen's cornflower blue eyes was instant, but her reaction was even quicker. She grabbed her bag, blew a kiss and added a few last bracing reassurances, and slipped out the door before Hastings could even start to regret being left alone.

She let the smile fall from her face and turned to stare out of the large window, not really seeing the beautiful view that her plush office afforded her.

The bone weary lethargy that had plagued her for months returned with a vengeance, and she was so tired of fighting. She had only just taken up trials into the use of surface electrodes to interface with advanced prosthetics, a method she hoped would significantly reduce the considerable pain of implanting electrodes directly into muscle tissue. She had been making such promising progress when she'd been called to headquarters for an emergency board meeting.

And then an unknown electrical malfunction had caused a fire, leading to an explosion which took out the entire west wing of her primary research facility.

Too many people had paid the price for that mistake.

Except no matter how many times she went over the evidence, she couldn't _find_ any mistake. The safety protocols she had insisted upon in the wake of her father's death had been sweeping and comprehensive. If she didn't fear that it was her own guilt talking, she could almost argue that the explosion was just a coincidence.

She leaned her forehead against the cold glass, and reached up to pull out the pins that kept her thick, dark hair in a painful but tidy knot upon her head. The heavy mass of curls was just falling down around her shoulders when a small rustle of sound captured her attention.

She turned quickly, searching the shadows at the back corner of her office. Her first thought was that Karen had snuck quietly back in for a forgotten item, but it was not Karen who emerged from the far dark corner. Instead, she found herself facing a tall, dark shadow.

The hairpins fell unheeded to the floor at her feet. She didn't see any perceivable weapon, but she knew what she was looking at.

There had been so many death threats in the past month that she'd been advised to hire extra security. She had complied, with a great deal of reluctance, knowing that if someone had wanted her dead enough, then dead she would be.

She'd been right.

"Thank you for waiting until Karen left," she blurted out. She was surprised that her voice sounded so commanding and didn't betray the fear she felt pounding in her chest. "I don't need her death on my conscience."

The dark shadow moved gracefully towards her, revealing a man with dark hair and clothes. In her shock it seemed to her as if the darkness clung to him like a lover, refusing to be left behind even as he came into the circle of light generated by the small corner lamp set up between her desk and the window.

When he spoke, his voice was slightly muted by a mask that covered the lower half of his face, but even this could not soften the acerbic nature of his reply.

"You have so many deaths to atone for, what would one more matter?"

She sucked in an agonized breath, realizing she'd been wrong to judge him unarmed. He brandished her guilt as the most efficient and painful of weapons, and the softly spoken taunt was a hard blow to her already frayed nerves.

Anger warred with fear and, for a moment, won.

"Well isn't that rich," she said with a derisive sniff, "coming from an _assassin_. And yes, it would matter. Every day I think about those innocent people who died, and every day I look in the mirror and face my guilt. But _you_, is your life anything but death and slaughter?"

A small whisper of sound was her only warning. He moved so fast her mind only registered that he was there, suddenly, right in front of her. He did not deign to touch her, but she felt the heat of his gaze upon her.

Without her heels, the top of her head barely reached his chin. She lifted her face, refusing to be cowed, and looked into his narrowed, glittering eyes. Like the rest of him, they refused to show their true form. Not quite blue, not quite green, they shifted somewhere in the murky waters of both colors like a stormy tempest.

"It's not my life you should be worried about," he threatened in a velvety rasp. It was disquieting, being so taunted, and she failed to quell the shiver that swept down her spine and left her entire body on sensitive alert.

She clenched her teeth together, vowing to face her death stoically. She'd be damned if she let her killer take that dignity away from her.

Although, she admitted to herself, she was already pretty damned.

"You're pretty damned what?"

His abrupt question made her jump, and she realized she'd spoken her last thought out loud. It was a particularly nasty habit, showing up at the most inconvenient and embarrassing of times. But she'd spent so much of her life alone and muttering lord knows _what_ to herself - she doubted she'd be able to stop now.

"Just damned," she answered. "Damned by a dozen families, and probably god, if there is one. Which one hired you?"

"Not god," he purred cryptically, taking a step closer. She tried to take a step back, but the cold glass of the window was behind her, and she had no other place to retreat. He was so close to her that when she took several deep breaths to brace herself, she caught an enticing whiff of woodsy pine.

"I meant which family," she snapped, feeling cornered and inexplicably angry now, not because he refused to answer, but because her killer dared to smell like the earth and outdoors and _life_.

An odd sound, like the grinding of gears, was her only response, and then his hand was around her throat. She could still breathe, for the moment, but the vise was cold and firm and she could not stop herself from reaching up her hands to claw and cling at his wrist.

It was a futile effort, as she realized that the hand that held her so precisely poised between life and death was not a hand of flesh and blood but some sort of advanced technological prosthetic that could likely snap her neck faster than she could blink.

How fitting an end.

"At least it won't be messy," she heard herself mutter, and she inwardly cringed.

"What won't be messy?" he demanded gruffly, his eyes furrowed in confusion.

"My death. It won't be a mess to clean up, if you snap my neck. Karen hates it when she has to clean up after me. I'm a bit of a slob," she explained lamely, wondering if people were always so chatty in the pitiful moments before their death.

"No, people aren't always so chatty before they die. Sometimes they beg, but I usually kill them too quickly."

He said it in such a matter-of-fact tone that her blood went cold, and like some ridiculous cliché her sad little life flashed before her eyes.

There wasn't much to see. With a mother who had died in childbirth and a father jet-setting around the world, her entire existence had been nothing but a series of impersonal encounters. She'd been handed from brisk, highly paid nurses to boarding schools that coldly screamed of decorum and practicality. By the time she'd been shipped off to university being alone was a habit. She had named it independence as the first step of taking pride in her loneliness.

And now it seemed that the end of her life was to be as cold, as efficient and as impersonal as the rest of it.

She knew she was only stalling the inevitable, but she couldn't stop herself from desperately demanding, "If I can't know whose money is paying for my death, can I at least see the face of my killer?"

The grip around her neck tightened, and she struggled in earnest to draw breath. She was such a fool. She was a fool to hope that her killer had even an ounce of humanity, and she was an even bigger fool for wanting to see the face that framed those cold, beautiful eyes.

"It's not fair."

She heard herself gasp out the adolescent words, even as she thought them, and the grip around her neck loosened. Hastings looked at her killer in an agony of suspense, gulping in much needed air, as he stared at her with unreadable eyes. His right arm lifted, and she flinched, until she realized that he was reaching for his mask.

Hastings had many regrets. And now, in the few moments she had left before her regrettable life was snuffed out forever, she could regret one more thing.

She regretted taunting her killer to expose his face. She realized too late, as she stared into his chiseled, haunting features, that this was far too intimate a gesture.

Tousled, dark hair fell forward to brush against high cheekbones, and she had to resist the absurd desire to reach out and tuck the strands back from his face, just to get a better view. A rugged, unshaved jaw was kept from being too stern by an unlikely cleft set faintly within his chin. His nose was straight and aristocratic, almost too pretty for a killer, she thought uncharitably.

His mouth was, at the moment, tightly pressed in a sullen line. But this sulky pout only served to emphasize a pair of sinfully sensual lips, curved up at the corners with a full and inviting bottom lip that drew her gaze and refused to let go.

She watched in rapt horror as he brought this gorgeous mouth close against her cheek to whisper in her ear.

"Nothing is more fair than death."


	3. Chapter 3

_Disclaimer: Nothing from Marvel is mine._

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><p>Adler Dynamics office headquarters, Washington D.C.<p>

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><p><em>Nothing is more fair than death.<em>

His words echoed in her head to the rapid beat of her fluttering heart, and it was hard for her to deny the philosophical nature of his reply. Hadn't she lain awake at night, thinking death is exactly what she deserved? Hoping for an end to the maddening ache, any end at all? A sudden warming calmness of acceptance filled her limbs and returned to her the devil-may-care courage she'd built up over the years as a defense against the emptiness.

"You're right, you know," she affirmed, her voice as whisper soft as his own had been. "I do have many deaths to atone for."

She turned her head to speak in his ear, and found her nose buried in the silky tangle of his hair, the rasp of his jaw against the soft skin of her cheek. She took another deep, bracing breath.

"I'm not going to fight you."

He sucked in an anguished breath and pulled back from her, his metal hand constricting again around her neck. "What did you say?"

She shook her head helplessly, unable to speak, tears springing to her eyes at the pain flowering in her lungs and chest.

Some emotion incomprehensible to her flickered in the depths of his eyes. Perhaps it was her fear, or a lack of oxygen making her loopy, because in that brief moment, it was as if she was looking into the eyes of a completely different person.

Not a killer, but a man tormented.

A man who was waging some internal war with himself.

"I'm not going to fight you," he echoed, with a shake of his head. "_He _said that. The man on the bridge.…"

He broke off, dropping his hand from her neck. She gasped in much needed air and brought her own hand up to soothe her now aching neck. She slumped against the window as the dark, enigmatic man began to pace in front of her. Three steps to her left, then precisely three steps to the right, and then again, words tumbling from his lips in a tangle of meaning.

"I knew him. I saved him in the water. He was my mission. He said he was my friend. It's impossible. But I know…I remember… I _know_ him."

She watched in avid fascination, barely able to track the myriad of emotions that now flickered across his face. It appeared that she had triggered in her killer some sort of crisis of faith.

"You saved someone once?" she heard herself ask, and she stiffened as he brought the full force of his attention back upon her.

He stopped abruptly in front of her, his nostrils flaring. "I saved many men, once."

He said it with dogged certainty, but in his eyes he looked as surprised by that confession as she was.

"Is that how you lost your arm?"

"My arm?" He lifted his metal hand between them, and stared at it in mutinous silence, slowly tightening his fingers into an angry fist, only to open them again.

Her eyes followed his gaze and it was then that the complexity of his prosthetic sent her reeling. There wasn't much in the world that drew Hastings out of her carefully built shell. She wasn't particularly good with people, and she had never been allowed pets. But machines had always been a comfort. She could understand them. She could read them, work them, and as she studied his arm she was lost in it.

The fact that the object of her fascination might be the source of her death was pushed to the back of her rather agile mind as she noted that the tech was much further advanced than anything currently on the market, and even more advanced than most of the research happening at her company or even by her carefully kept-at-a-distance colleagues working at MIT.

"The biomimetic mechanisms are highly developed," she observed, with more than a hint of wonder in her voice. "The dynamic flexibility you can achieve is nothing short of a miracle, yet whatever kind of actuator you've got in there produces far more force than your native musculature."

He was looking at her like she'd just sprouted a second head, but she was brimming with so many questions, the possibilities swirling through her brain, and she looked at him with newfound interest.

"Your biosensors must rely on some sort of natural neural interface. What kind of sensory feedback are you getting? Can you feel me?"

She reached out to trace her fingers over the knuckles of his hand, now clutched in a fist between them, and he flinched, pulling away from her with a grunt of warning.

She stood, frozen, her own arm now held uselessly between them in a gesture of supplication. Some part of her wanted to keep quiet and not provoke him further, but her curiosity had always been unappeasable.

"Can you tell me anything about your arm?" She tried to keep her voice low and gentle. Her killer now looked like _he_ wanted to bolt.

"It wasn't always like this," he muttered.

The obvious nature of that statement would have been funny, if he wasn't looking at her with wide eyes full of incomprehension and a type of agony she could not even begin to fathom.

"They don't let me know," he continued, his tone bleak. "I get my mission. I know my mission. They don't let me know..."

He broke off, and just when she thought her current scenario couldn't get any more diabolically surreal, her beautiful, tormented assassin stepped away to remove his outer jacket with a speed that surprised her, completely unhampered by his prosthetic.

"They never let me know," he repeated, "and I never wanted to know. But now…" A black, form-fitting tank followed the jacket to the floor at his feet, and he turned back towards the light to stand just a few feet in front of her.

He continued to speak in the same cryptic fashion, but his voice faded into the background of her mind as she gaped in rapt fascination at his now bare upper body. Her greedy eyes roved over his well-muscled chest, with nary a hair to muddle the smooth tautness of his skin. His waist was narrow and well-defined, but it was his arms that drew her gaze the longest. The right was corded with muscle to match the wide strength of his shoulders, but the left….

Her mouth went dry. The advanced prosthetic extended all the way to his shoulder, where metal met skin and muscle in a painful looking gash of scarring and traumatized tissue. She winced, but she couldn't look away, finding this marred beauty more compelling to her senses than perfection could ever be.

"I need to you tell me about it." His demanding tone finally cut through the haze of her distraction, drawing her gaze back to his eyes. It was then that she really saw the pain lurking under the surface.

"Electrodes implanted directly into muscle can be abrasive, to say the least. For something this advanced, with this level of integrated interfacing, you must need constant pain management. Is that how they control you, whoever this 'they' is that you keep mentioning?"

"No," he answered, edging away from her like _she_ was somehow now the threat in the room.

"Who even has this kind of technology? Who _are_ you?" she countered, angry at his obvious lie and overwhelmed by a flurry of conflicting questions swirling in her head like wildfire. She didn't know what to ask first, so she stuck to the path she was already on.

"Who are 'they'? And why do they want me dead? I'm certainly not a threat to whoever can develop something like that."

"It doesn't matter," he ground out between clenched teeth. "Tell me how it works."

She laughed then, she couldn't help herself, and the sound was hollow and almost cruel. "I've spent as long as I can remember studying the tech that my father and grandfather invented, but I won't be able to understand how your arm works just by looking at it. And it doesn't matter how many clothes you take off," she added petulantly.

He stiffened, drawing his shoulders back in a show of aggression. "You will help me. I do know my mission. I know _you_, and you can help me."

She huffed in frustration, and she wasn't even sure what she was so angry about. The entire situation was beginning to seem like some grand, ridiculous joke, and she was so goddamn tired of feeling like she had no control over her own life.

Even the last moments of it.

She narrowed her eyes at him in annoyance. "I can hardly help you if you won't be a _little_ bit specific about what you want to know. And perhaps even a little bit more forward with the information you _do_ know. You might want to consider being a little bit more polite too, because right now I really don't have any impetus to…"

"Can I get rid of it?" he interrupted, knocking the wind right out of her sails.

She felt deflated. She felt like he'd punched her. She sucked in a breath. "It does control you," she said on a loud exhale.

"Shut up." His eyes glittered with threat.

She ignored it. "Who are _they_?"

"Shut up!" he said again, pushing towards her, encasing her against the window with the bulk of his body. "Shut up and tell me what I want to know."

She'd never been any good at keeping quiet once her curiosity had been piqued past bearing.

"What happened to you? Why did they do this to you?"

"I don't know. Shut up!"

She was opening her mouth for another question, but her grabbed her shoulders and gave her several forceful shakes.

"Stop it. Stop pushing. SHUT UP!" He screamed the last two words, and shook her a final time, so hard that her head fell back against the window with a sickly crack of sound. His eyes widened, and he let go of her in that very instant, but she was pushed too far off balance. She instinctively reached out and grabbed at the closest solid thing within reach.

Her hands clutched at his shoulders, grasping for purchase, but she felt herself slipping to the floor anyway. It was only then that he tucked his metal arm around her waist to support her weight, with a gentleness that surprised her. She couldn't stop herself from slumping against his muscled chest, and leaning her forehead against the warm shoulder of his uninjured arm.

She could feel the harsh and jagged beat of his heart, almost as swift as her own. Hastings tried to calm her breathing and regain some semblance of control, but then the lunatic man reached his right hand up to probe at the back of her head. She hissed in pain when he easily found the sore, injured spot.

"It's not bleeding," he muttered, with more than a hint of reproach in his voice.

"It still hurts!"

"I'm sorry." He sounded more exasperated than sincere.

"You're going to kill me," she mumbled morosely into his chest, "you're not allowed to be sorry you've hurt me."

"I'm not going to kill you."


	4. Chapter 4

_Warning: Mature sexual themes and scenes in this chapter. _

_Disclaimer: Nothing from Marvel is mine._

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><p>Adler Dynamics office headquarters, Washington D.C.<p>

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><p>He wasn't going to kill her?<p>

At his soft confession, she jerked back from him, suspicious of what torment he had in mind instead. There _were_ things worse than death, of this she was certain. But when she looked into his eyes again she didn't see the cold deception she was expecting. Despair is what she saw, and loneliness. She couldn't help feeling a bit of kinship with him.

Given that he was an assassin, it was astonishing that he should remind her of herself. But she looked at him, broken and alone, and heavens help her but she saw herself, spending every spare moment with a book or a piece of tech in her lap, trying to pretend she didn't care that she lacked the comfort of companionship or family.

The realization was not a comforting one, but she was in no mood to be comforted. She was, ironically, finally in the mood to _live_.

And so she did.

She gave in to the wild, reckless desire that had plagued her from the moment her would-be killer had taken off his mask and exposed that wicked pair of beautifully curved lips. She tipped her face up, leaned into him, and pressed her mouth to his.

She caught him off guard with his lips slightly parted, and she relished this one small advantage as she swiped her tongue along the opening, eager to take the kiss deeper.

He made a harsh sound somewhere in the back of his throat, and then went utterly still. He made no attempt to return her kiss. His lips were warm and pliant against hers, but she may as well have been kissing a statue.

She cursed herself for a fool (again), and moved to back away, but his arm tightened around her waist to keep her pinned against him. She could feel the cool metallic hardness of it at the small of her back, through the thin silk of her blouse, a stark contrast to the heat of firm muscle pressed against her chest and belly.

She wasn't sure if it was embarrassment or desire that sent a flush of heat to flare in her face and trickle down her neck. She lifted her gaze from his lips to his eyes, and under a haze of confusion she saw a dark hunger.

"I remember this too," he said, his voice low and rough. "But…not like that."

She'd already learned a harsh lesson on the dangers of pressuring him, but she couldn't seem to stop her unnatural curiosity where this man was concerned.

"What do you remember?"

His lips curled. It was a small, playful smile that gentled his features and gave his handsomeness an almost boyish air. Yet instead of making him look innocent, Hastings couldn't help but think that here was the wickedly sinful smile of the devil himself. There was a hint of mischief there, and more than the promise of pleasures to come, should she just offer up her lonely, worthless soul as eternal payment.

"I remember something more like this," he said huskily, and then he bent his head and took her lips in a searing kiss that curled her toes into the plush silky carpet. This kiss was nothing like the first. This was the kiss of a practiced man who well knew how to seduce a woman with just his mouth, with the pressure of his lips and the sweeping heat of his tongue.

Her head no longer hurt, or perhaps she couldn't feel it. Her world narrowed to the warm curl of desire in her belly, fanned to life by each pass of his mouth over hers. He was demanding, but not forceful, and when he coaxed her mouth open with an expert flick of his tongue, she was left without a single doubt that her soul was no longer her own.

He gently pushed her trembling body back against the window. She wrapped her arms around his neck and buried her fingers in the untamed hair at the nape of his neck.

When he moaned his desire into her mouth, she was lost.

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><p>The heat sweeping through his limbs was both familiar and foreign. It confused him, but his body seemed to have a mind of its own, unwilling to stop tasting the woman in his arms until all of his hunger was sated.<p>

It had been such a long time since he'd felt anything but a numbing cold emptiness to match the ever-present agony that burned through his shoulders and down his back. The pain always grew to an unbearable intensity the longer he was away from his vault to complete his missions, and only abated again once he returned.

He'd been growing increasingly uncomfortable with the amount of control his body seemed to have over his mind, especially since he encountered the man on the bridge. But there was something different about this moment that compelled even his mind into submission.

For the heated, pinching pain in his shoulders was changing to another type of heat entirely, and this molten lust was sweeping down his back and up his thighs and pooling in his belly, swirling and _itching_ and hardening him. He could feel his cock straining against the fabric of his pants. It was a sweet type of ache, ridding him of his accustomed torment and replacing it with a demanding pressure.

He _had_ to get closer. He wanted to feel her skin against him. She was so goddamn soft. He brought his hands up to cradle her face and felt her skin against his own, on his right hand. His left hand, this monster part of him, sent a humming current up his shoulder to wind down his spine in a burning spiral.

Pain and pleasure.

He was used to the one, hated its power over him, but mixed with the other he found it to be a heady, dizzying combination. And the more he touched her, the more pleasure he found.

He grazed her cheek with his thumbs, felt again the snap and heat and twisting throb. He tilted her head to a more accessible angle so he could bury his tongue between her lips and taste the sweet, wet softness of her mouth.

But it wasn't enough. His cock was burning and twitching and he wanted to _bury_ himself in her. He growled his dominance into her mouth, nudging her knees apart with his thigh, pressing against her belly.

Images swirled and danced at the back of his mind. Other women, and other moments of sweet hot sex. He knew them to be memories now, and a small part of him screamed to stop and try to collect them — to hunt these puzzle pieces down and put them together to unlock the secrets of his tangled past.

But he would not stop. Could not.

He forced her head back to kiss along her jaw, trailing his mouth lower, to her neck, and he tasted that softness too. He was reminded of his earlier roughness and a jab of guilt twisted in his chest.

This was not an emotion he was accustomed to feeling. He didn't understand it.

But still, he did not stop.

He soothed her tender flesh, sucked with his tongue and nibbled until she was moaning and pleading _please_ and rubbing herself against his thigh. Her small hands clutched at his neck, pulled at his hair, and he wanted her to touch him everywhere.

His lips met fabric, and then her hands were busy with the buttons of her shirt. She shrugged out of it at a frantic pace, and gave a soft sigh of approval when his mouth found her collarbone, and lower, to tease at the top of her breast. He lifted her against the window, pushing her skirt up her thighs and hooking her legs around his hips.

She was shockingly light in his arms, even lighter than he'd first guessed when he'd noted her short but curvy frame. Like the guilt from before, he couldn't begin to fathom why this bothered him. He pulled his mouth from her neck to look at her, flushed and heavy lidded, and he gruffly demanded, "Don't you eat?"

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><p>Hastings tightened her legs around his waist, reveling in his strength. She could feel the hard ridge of his arousal straining under the fabric of his pants, as he ground his cock against the cradle of her hips. Wetness pooled at her core as her body anticipated the moment when nothing stood between them.<p>

She could think of nothing else, was about to demand it, when his expression cut through the haze of her desire and she realized that he'd asked her a question.

"What did you say?"

His right hand reached up to graze her bare abdomen, his fingers softly caressing under her breast. She bit her lip to stifle another moan.

"You're as light as a feather. I can feel your ribs. I can _see_ them," he muttered accusingly. "Don't you eat?"

She could only stare in astonishment. Her body burned and ached and _demanded_, and she saw the hunger in his eyes to match her own.

And tucked behind that desire she saw a bewildered concern.

She couldn't blame him for his confusion. She searched and fought for an answer, and finally settled on the truth. "I haven't had much of an appetite lately. For anything really. I usually just feel sick. Sometimes I wish I had been there…"

She couldn't meet his gaze for that sordid confession.

His breathing was rough and jagged, and he dropped her legs to back away from her. She slumped against the window, barely able to support her own weight on now trembling limbs. It was an alarming type of agony, to lose such power and strength when she had no right to it.

A strength she should be inclined to fear instead of want, if she wasn't going out of her mind with grief and insidious hunger. She stared at him helplessly, assailed by the old feelings of inadequacy that had haunted her adolescence. "I don't understand."

"You shouldn't want that," he growled back at her.

Realization dawned. "Why not? You said I need to atone. You said death was fair."

He lifted his metal arm, closing his fingers into a menacing fist. "_This_ is not fair."

This moment was a puzzle she couldn't quite unlock. Hastings had a knowledge of machine that was far-reaching and comprehensive, but her knowledge of man was rather limited, and she had never before dared to take on the role of seducer. It wasn't surprising that she had failed. Plus, it was difficult to inflame him when some tender part of her simply wanted to soothe him.

She approached him slowly, conscious of the wary hunger lurking in his eyes.

She would help him, if that's what he demanded.

"You want me to tell you about your arm?"

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><p>He'd wanted her to help him.<p>

He'd wanted her to touch him.

And now she was.

It was instinct to back away, to avoid the touch of anyone but his handlers. They usually only touched him with tools and, less often, with gloved hands. He watched, fought his instinct, as she reached out to trail her fingers down the metal of his arm, in a long line from elbow to wrist. His shoulder hummed in response and he hissed at the unexpected feeling of heat that both taunted and aroused him.

Her eyes widened. "You_ can_ feel. In what way? How is that possible?" She stepped closer to peer at the metal detailing, before reaching down to take his hand in hers. She skimmed her fingers over his palm in soft, circling strokes. Energy swept through his arm and thrummed down his spine. He clenched his jaw to suppress an appreciative moan.

No one touched him like this.

She continued her maddening spiral up his forefinger and gasped in wonder. "There are small nodules. They're not visible to the eye but I can feel them. What do they sense? Pressure? Airflow? Temperature?"

He did not answer, and she dropped his hand to investigate his shoulder. "This technology shouldn't exist," she muttered, intent on her task. She dared to trace her fingers around the puckered skin where metal met muscle. The touch was probing this time, almost clinical. A shudder passed through his traitorous body as her soft, seeking fingers sent another jolt of desire to settle between his thighs.

Her gaze snapped up to his, and they were full of so much hunger. And sadness and pity and concern and he was suddenly angry. He'd been sent to kill her. She was his mark. She wasn't supposed to want him, or _care_.

This was new. And somehow familiar. And he couldn't understand why he hesitated in simply taking what he needed from her. His world was upending, hanging on the knife edge of madness, and just when he thought he might have regained a semblance of control over his wayward body, the madwoman trailed her hand over his chest, curling her fingers to gently scrape her nails over the sensitive skin surrounding his nipple.

His groan filled the room between them, and she snatched her hand back from him so fast, it was as if he'd burned her.

"I'm sorry," she whispered. "I just can't seem to help myself. You're…"

She looked up at him, hesitant now, eyes wide and honest and shimmering silver. "You're…beautiful."

She _was_ mad.

He hadn't been briefed for this. He didn't know what to do with the sensations fighting and clamoring for dominance – emotions, murky memories, pain and heat and lust and _hunger_.

She was small and delicate and vulnerable and half-naked before him. And she was hungry too, for something a part of him could understand and pity. But she was also hungry for him, and he'd burned through whatever burst of nobleness had compelled him to back away from her before.

* * *

><p>His eyes hardened with desire, and he grabbed her with lethal speed. She didn't even see it coming. He twirled her and pulled her against him, her back to his front, and wrapped his arm firmly around her waist.<p>

"You wanted to know if I could feel you," he growled in her ear, as he made quick work of freeing her from her bra. Her latent desire, never fully tapped down after their first embrace, rose wildly back to the surface.

She gasped in astonishment as he cupped her bare breasts with both hands. She could feel the contrast, one supple warmth and the other a cool firmness, and she arched into his touch, leaning her head back against his shoulder. He scraped his thumbs over her nipples, already peaked and sensitive, sending a bolt of heat to her core.

His lips found her ear again. "You feel soft. Is this the information you want?"

She could barely get out an affirmative answer as fingers traced down her belly in a gentle, incessant line. The trail reached the waistband of her skirt, and paused.

"Should I tell you more of what I feel?"

She nodded, and he dipped his thumbs under the fabric to push her skirt and panties down over her hips. The fabric was softly pooling around her ankles when a hard, metallic finger pressed in and slid up her wet folds. Heat flared in her sex, and his gruff voice sent another thrill of want down her spine.

"Wet. You are so wet. This I can feel."

She panted against him as he gently circled her clit, pressing and rubbing as pressure built and swelled. His finger was cool, at first, but it warmed the more he worked at her, and it seemed to hum with a murmur of responsive vibration. The incessant taunt of pressing and rubbing and thrumming was sending her quickly over the edge, but before she could chase her release his finger relinquished this task to seek and taunt lower.

"I can feel this too. Hot, so hot you burn me."

His mouth left her ear to lick down her neck at the same moment he slid a metal finger up her sex in a smooth glide. She clenched around him in a visceral, shuddering response.

"Ah, a tight pressure, I can feel that," he murmured against her skin.

A second finger pushed in to join the first. She didn't know it was possible to feel so full and stretched and complete and his fingers were throbbing and _rubbing_ within her now. The intensity was almost too much to bear. Her knees trembled and almost gave out, until he wrapped his arm of flesh and bone around her waist to support her. He lifted her a few inches, so that her toes were barely touching the ground, and her weight balanced upon his hand, those hard, unyielding fingers pushing up into her, deeper now, spreading her past all bearing.

"You _are_ going to kill me," she moaned on a breathy sob. Yet it was a lie. She had never felt so alive.

He pulled out of her and lowered her gently to the floor, settling himself between her thighs. As he leaned down to kiss her, she trailed her hands down his chest to work at his zipper, her knuckles grazing against the hard ridge of his arousal.

He bucked against her touch, helped her push his pants down over his hips and then he was _there_, finally, pushing into her, slowly, and she hissed at the heat of him, at the feeling of fullness and belonging. She clutched at his back in protest when he pulled out in a long, languid glide, but then he was snapping his hips forward and filling her to completion.

He repeated this motion, slow pull followed by hard thrust, changing the angle and roll of his hips to suit his pleasure. It was an agony of a tease, but in his face she saw calculating intent, and aching curiosity. She wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him in for a searing kiss, soothing his mouth with her lips and begging him for _more_ and _faster_ and _please_.

He twitched against her, eased out of her with that tormenting slowness, and she could feel her body tugging at him with want. And then he rolled his hips against her, entering her at an angle that caused the wide head of his cock to scrape and taunt her at her most sensitive spot. She bit back a scream at the intensity of the pleasure that spiraled up her spine, but he was relentless in his newfound pace, thrusting deep and fast and frenzied.

He grew even thicker inside of her, the widened tip rubbing and teasing at an aching knot that grew and then burst in a dizzying explosion of feeling that sent splinters of light flashing behind her eyelids. She screamed her release then, but he was not finished, maintaining his relentless pace as he chased after his own. She was too sensitive, the pleasure bordering on pain, but still he pushed her and she felt herself coming apart again as he thickened and swelled and spilled inside of her on a satisfied moan.

In the wake of their pleasure, while they were both still breathing in heavy gasps, she looked up at her assassin turned lover to find him staring at her with a fierce intensity.

"You don't have any deaths to atone for."

She blinked in confusion. "I don't?"

"The explosion wasn't your fault. It was a set-up."

An instant flare of cathartic release swept through her chest, quickly replaced by an insidious suspicion.

"But who…"

Comprehension dawned as she saw the guilt burned onto his face like a brand. A numbing chill began to spread through her limbs to replace the languid heat. How could she have forgotten what he was? She tried to get up, but he held her down.

"They want Adler Dynamics. They have….plans. They want you dead. They won't stop until you are."

Tears burned the backs of her eyelids. She pushed against him, and gritted out, "Who are they?"

"Hydra."

She gasped. "Those animals with the human enslavement agenda?"

The news coverage of the events leading up to the massive explosions in D.C. three months ago had been incessant. The coverage had only been interrupted to cover the tragedy at her facility. She'd wanted to investigate the group further, because the name Hydra had triggered some latent memory regarding her father, but she'd been distracted.

"They won't stop. You need to come with me."

She gaped at him. She had been lost in her lonely desire, full of fear and grief and so much want. And now, in the aftermath of that glorious union, guilt and horror and anger swirled for dominance. "You work for _them_? What kind of sick game are you playing? I'm not going anywhere with you!"

"I'm not asking, Hastings."

Her name on his lips was a sweet torment. She realized that she didn't even know his. He shook his head emphatically.

"Enough questions. We need to get moving. I'm already late for extraction."

He pulled her up from the floor, despite her protestations. "You work with killers and terrorists, you're not my protector. I'm not going with you! What the hell is wrong with you?"

She was so upset it didn't occur to her to wonder why he was saving her now, instead of fulfilling his mission. She was too caught up in the shock and fury.

She felt a rush of panic when she saw the stark cold emptiness re-enter his eyes, and she fought him in earnest when his hand returned to her neck. There was no longer gentleness in his touch, only aggressive intent. She tried to push him away, to kick at his shins, but adrenaline was no match for his technologically buffered strength.

She choked, as hot tears slipped down her cheeks.

She didn't even know his name.

It was her final thought before darkness swept over her like the tide.


	5. Chapter 5

_Disclaimer: Nothing from Marvel is mine._

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><p>Epilogue. Somewhere in southern Maryland.<p>

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><p>The knock was a surprise.<p>

Steve Rogers was putting dishes away when it came. There were only a few people who knew the location of this safe house. Sam usually preferred to meet closer to the city, and Natasha wasn't in the habit of knocking.

He closed the cupboard, and made his way carefully towards the door, unprepared for the sight that greeted him when he peered out of the window.

He fumbled with the lock in his hurry to get the door open, his words tumbling out even before he swung it inward.

"Bucky? You're here. I can't believe it. I've been looking for you. You…" He hesitated. His easy public eloquence seemed to fail him when he desperately needed it one on one.

He was, in fact, so focused on the old friend he'd been searching for that he didn't even notice the limp form Bucky held cradled in his arms until the man pushed his way in through the door.

Without even a word of acknowledgement.

Steve followed and watched him unceremoniously dump his burden down on the ugly floral hand-me-down couch near the side wall. The body landed with a soft bounce, and then lay unnaturally still.

"Who is she?" Steve demanded, for a brief moment more concerned about something other than getting through to the man buried deep within the assassin standing across from him.

Bucky turned to face him. "My mission."

Steve sucked in a worried breath at that bit of information, and quickly made his way towards the small form on the couch. She had never moved, and she was unusually pale. He went to one knee and touched the woman lightly on the neck, flinching to himself when he saw the bruising that mottled the delicate alabaster of her skin.

A pulse fluttered under his thumb, and he heaved a sigh of relief as hope flooded him. Not just hope for her, but hope for James. He was convinced that some part of his old friend still remained, and here was yet more proof that he could be reached. Steve knew this woman would be dead if otherwise.

He smiled. "She's alive. Bucky, what mission? Why did you…"

He trailed off when he turned to find himself looking out of the open door to the dark woods beyond.

Bucky was gone.

His gaze fell back to the woman on the couch, searching for clues. She was clad in a wrinkled skirt and mis-buttoned blouse thin enough to reveal that there was nothing else on underneath. The fabric appeared expensive, the cut well-tailored. Her feet were bare but not dirty; her fingers and toes cleanly manicured. Her sable hair looked inclined to rebellion, and spilled over her shoulders to hang off the edge of the couch in a tangle of silky well-maintained curls.

She was someone of means. And if she'd been marked by Hydra then she was someone of importance. He studied her face intently. She looked familiar to him, but he couldn't quite place her in his memory.

If she needed to be protected - and there was no doubt in his mind that that was the reason Bucky had brought her here - then he would be sure to keep her safe.

"Who are you?" he wondered aloud.

One thing was certain. The trail for James Buchanan Barnes was no longer cold.

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><p><strong>Note:<strong>

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><p>Thanks for reading! I know it's short, the darn thing was intended as a one-shot and I have a bad habit of going overboard with backstory and characterization. Seriously, guys, it's a big problem. I just can't stop. Anyway, I'm returning after a long hiatus from writing fanfic and I wanted to ease back into it. I do have a few additional scenes in mind for these two - perhaps something with Tony Stark (not in a smutty way, but in a working with machines kind of way) and I also have the beginnings of a tie-in with Ultron swirling around in my head - but I can't guarantee anything anytime soon. It'll depend on when inspiration hits, and also any expressed interest. Please leave a note if you enjoyed, so I know. Thanks again!<p> 


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